The Japanese soon copied all these Tagal braids and quickly made it almost impossible for any other competitor, although at first their reproductions were extremely faulty. While Italy, that also made hemp plaits, and Switzerland yet enjoy a small trade, it is probable that at least 95 per cent of Pedal Tagal emanates from the “Land of the Rising Sun,” which has found means to utilize other varieties of hemp, and has also incorporated silk fibres into the plaitting, and at the same time is now producing qualities that are not surpassed by either of the European varieties. The only merit of continental Tagal above the Japanese is that the braids are somewhat firmer and squarer in make.
Hemp fibres, like almost all others, have been extensively used, either by themselves or in conjunction with other materials, in making fancy braids of a thousand and one varieties. One feature of all Tagal plaits is that there is no other known medium which combines such toughness and wear-resisting qualities.
Further, plaits have been made from the naturally produced vegetable fibres, Raffia, Cuba Bast, Yedda (a particularly light stripping from an exotic plant), Sinnet or Palm leaf, Rushes of all kinds, and various similar growths.
Mechanically prepared fibres from vegetable growths such as cotton, jute, etc., have been pressed into the making of various braids of close and open designs, while silk and imitation silks of cellulose nature have enjoyed great popularity as plaits for making fancy hats.
The only purely animal product used in making plaits is horsehair. This material, so extremely liked by the highest classes of wearers, is now most difficult to obtain owing to the rise of the motor car and the subsequent decline of the horse, but in spite of its origin it has been, since at least sixty years, included as one of the materials that can be classified as a “straw hat.”
All the plaits mentioned, with very few exceptions, such as the cellulose, visca, cotton or black horsehair varieties, require bleaching or dyeing before being ready for sewing. In a few cases these processes take place where the plait is made, but generally speaking they are done at the places where plaits are made into hats.
CHAPTER IV
STRAW HOODS—METHOD OF PREPARING AND OF WEAVING THE FIBRES
The previous chapter has dealt with the materials used in plait and the incidental processes necessary to the preparation of the fibres, because plait is undoubtedly at the present day the principal medium for the fashionable straw hat. As the opening chapter proves, the earliest periods of the use of vegetable fibres for head coverings were entirely devoted to the weaving of the hat in one piece, as, for example, a basket is woven. In fact, the use of plait braid has been adopted only for about 400 years, but, although large quantities of woven hats still continue to be made, plait has gradually taken the premier place. But any description of the straw hat trade would be incomplete without a proper account of the woven hat or “hood,” as it is termed in the trade, the word “hat” implying the finished article. In the first place the fibres that can be made into plait can also be made into hoods, for any fibre capable of being manipulated in plaitting can be woven. (The term “woven” is used in want of a better, because the action needed is really more what is generally known as “weaving” than “plaitting,” although both processes are done by hand, with one or two minor exceptions.) There are, however, several fibres that are woven into hoods that are not generally utilized for making plaits, although quite suitable, but their nature is such as to demand a different preparatory treatment to any of those essentially straw. These are the “Panama” and the Panama imitations or substitutes. Among the substitutes are “Curaçoas,” “Bowens,” “Jipi-Japas,” etc.; and the imitations are “Javas,” “Bankoks,” “Brazilians,” “Manilas” and “Paper Panamas” made from strips of paper rolled to imitate, and they do imitate very closely, the natural fibre used in the real Panama. A description of the true “Panama” fibre will give an insight into the nature of all the substitutes, the preparations for weaving being nearly identical in every case. The origin of the Panama hat is obscured in oblivion, but the source of supply ranges round about Central America, and from Ecuador claims are made that in the province of Manavi, a native named Francisco Delgado first made a Panama hat about 300 years ago. This very Spanish name for a native evokes a suspicion that the date given was the first Spanish record of the matter, for it is most probable that the making of grass fibre hats in the Western Hemisphere was, like it has been shown to be in the Eastern, of the most remote antiquity. But researches made by our Consular Office can only supply the above information. The material used is derived from a kind of native palm or palm grass known as paja toquilla, and resembles, in its fan like shape, the saw palmetto. Cultivation usually takes place in selected low-hung wet lands, and the seed is planted in rows during the rainy season. When the grass attains a height of 4½ to 5 ft., it is cut just before ripening, boiled in water, and after being thoroughly dried in the sun, is sorted through very carefully. The actual selection of fibres for the best class hat is most thorough, and all unlikely leaves are rejected.
Those finally selected are in some districts, such as Manavi, dampened with water to make them tough, pliable, and amenable to stripping into the required widths. In Columbia, where the “Palmicha” is used, the leaves are boiled for a certain time till they soften and turn a light yellow in colour. This process of boiling is an art in itself, and seems to present greater difficulties without corresponding advantages to the simple damping. The leaves done by either method are then separated and hung to dry in a current of air, but not in the sun. Before they are quite dry the splitting operation commences; this is still done in some districts in the primitive method by the thumb-nail of the operator, in others a Y-shaped wooden tool is used. The splints, when being split are made to curl slightly at the edges, causing the fibre to assume a roundness. The subsequent drying causes this roundness to become permanent. They are then made into suitable bundles, and wrapped in clean damp cloths to protect them from the dry atmosphere as well as from the light. The hood weavers commence at the apex of crown and continue the weaving in a circular and transverse manner, until the edge of the brim is reached, when a double “return” is made to give strength and form to the hat. Some centres use wooden blocks, on which the hood is shaped during its progress of weaving, others follow simply the primitive method of rule of thumb, but during late years the demand for larger head entries to Panama hats has caused a more general using of either the wooden block or a suitable template in order that the size of the crowns may be more uniform.